The Scavenger's Tale
by robinwitch1
Summary: Long after the passing of the Dragonborn, a Synod researcher finds the sole remaining witness to an episode in her life that makes it easier for him to understand why she was selected by the gods as the champion of the dragon blood. (Set in the same universe as "I Take You With Me," but can be read independently.)


19

The Scavenger's Tale

"There's your man."

The innkeeper nodded toward one of the far corners, away from the light. He hadn't been willing to talk at first, but a taste of the coin that the Synod had advanced me for expenses like these had loosened his lips. I've heard men say that water can wear away any obstacle, but in my line of work it's not water, it's gold. Gold always has its way, sooner or later.

Besides, I meant the fellow no harm. The Synod's interest was purely historical. All I needed was information about someone who was by now long dead and gone. Well, you can never tell about that "gone," can you? but dead, yes, certainly.

I bought a couple of bottles of ridiculously over-priced Black-Briar Reserve from the innkeeper, much to his delight, and walked over to the corner he had indicated. The old man, very old, I could see now, was sitting in the dark and staring into the fire with a bit of a frown on his face, away from the few other patrons of the inn on this dark winter night. I sat down on the bench opposite to him and put the bottles on the table between us. He glanced at them and smiled, a rather thin smile with no humor behind it.

"I'm guessing it's about _her_, isn't it? The bottles…" He picked one up and examined it carefully before emptying it into his tankard. "…the bottles give it away. You lay out for this, you've got questions in mind. You're not the first."

I nodded. Others had been busy on the same errand years earlier, something that complicated my quest considerably. They hadn't always asked politely.

"Though I thank you for sparing me the knife-point in my back that those damned elves felt necessary," the old man continued. "I'll tell you what I told them. No harm in your people knowing it anyway. And perhaps without that knife poking at me, my memory will be a bit clearer."

He stared into the fire for another long minute, lost in thought, and began.

"I'm a farmer of sorts now, with a respectable wife and a son grown up and looking for a wife of his own. We raise and gather plants, mostly for the alchemy trade. They're getting harder to find with the wild country safer and everyone scuttling over the hills now, and the prices are higher every year. My wife knows a few tricks of how to cultivate the rarer ones, and we even have a small cave on the property that's good for mushrooms and the other things that don't fancy the light. There's a bit of stonework down there, and when we first came we dug a lot of dwarven metal and Dwemer bits and pieces out of the earth. They're all gone now except for a few the wife insisted we keep, cups and dishes, that sort of thing. When I was married, every plate on the table at our wedding feast was from the old dwarves. The guests said they'd never seen the like. Not that it made the food taste any better, mind you. But it makes a man proud to marry in style and be talked of in praise all across the hold. Especially when he has a past he's not all that proud of, and doesn't want anyone talking about that.

"I'd been a scavenger, you see. Someone who went across battlefields in the dark and relieved the dead of all those things they no longer had any use for. My father had followed the same trade before me, and his father too. Gods above, there were more than enough battles in the old days, mad times, pulling arrows out of bodies to sell to Khajiit traders, who rinsed off the blood and peddled them to the soldiers and the bandits to shoot each other with, again and again. Swords, helmets, shields….all going back to be handed out once more as grave-clothes for another victim. Once I picked up the same damned shield over and over, a strange design with spikes on the boss. I saw that shield no less than three times in one summer month. Scarcely had the heart to sell it the third time; I felt as if I were passing on a curse. But business was business.

"We had our honor. If we found a man alive, we didn't kill him to rob him, as some would. Oh, we'd rob him, but we'd leave him clothed and treated as best we could, near to some outpost, or send word to his friends where he was, by way of any minstrel or monk who came by. Put him on a ledge if there was one near, out of the reach of the bears and wolves. All the mercy we could afford. Sometimes it worked; sometimes not.

"That habit was what made me a respectable farmer in the end, as a matter of fact. We found a soldier hurt bad near Falkreath, relieved her of her armor and weapons, patched her up a bit, and paid a couple of septims to a peasant who happened to be passing in his wagon to take her back to the barracks there while she still had breath in her. Turned out she was cousin to the Jarl of Falkreath, and he'd feared her dead. Years later, long after the peace, she recognized me while I was in Falkreath selling some of the things we'd picked up from the old tombs, and had the Jarl reward me with that farm. I was tired of the trade by then, of being jackal to the Dragonborn, so I took it and settled down, and now here I am.

"But you want to know about that part, don't you? The Dragonborn? I'm getting to it, don't worry.

"I was very young then, and working with three or four friends, a loose group that got larger or smaller according to need. The first thing you have to understand is that we heard about things quickly. Had to. Being first was the only way we could make any money. We had our own network of scouts and spies, paid off in coin or equipment, innkeepers and soldiers, courtiers and couriers. Or we traded information, what you need to know for what I need to know. Informal, but effective.

"Through these contacts, and tavern gossip, we began to hear bits and pieces about some Dragonborn or other. Vague at first, and we didn't pay it much attention. A lot of people boast. Then the minstrels and bards get hold of it - you've heard what they sing about her now, you'd think she'd been the Tenth Divine from all the stories they've made up. It wasn't much better even then. But a bit later, we ran into one of the soldiers who had been at the Western Watchtower when she killed that first dragon and learned she could Shout. He was certainly impressed. Took it a bit more seriously after that, but still, it didn't seem relevant. Dragons? She was welcome to them. Dragons don't wear armor or wield swords, and when one of them goes down, it draws a _lot_ of attention. Inconvenient for our line of work.

"The first time our paths crossed, though we didn't meet face to face, was at Ironbind Barrow. It was one of _those_ places in the old days, a place that the occasional adventurer went into, and more likely than not never came out again. Or if he or she did, probably empty-handed and not willing to talk about it much. We were moving between one job and another, a cheerful group, the picture of youthful innocence, telling the curious we were farmers off to join the rebels or the Empire, whichever seemed as if it would make them happier. Well, we happened to be in the neighborhood and decided to swing by Ironbind Barrow, just to give the outside a once-over. No intention of going in, of course.

"We found a Redguard woman passed out in a little camp in the entryway. There were two dead bandits nearby - fine quality equipment on them both, I remember - almost new. The woman herself was in rough shape. It looked as if she'd fought both the bandits and won, just barely, and if not for us she'd probably have been wolf-bait, or if she escaped that, dead of exposure and blood loss. Expensive set of steel-plate armor, very, and Norri, one of the group then who was half Redguard, on his mother's side I think, said he guessed her folk must be rich and there'd be coin and goodwill both in it if we could find out what family she was from and get word back to them. I knew what he meant, and agreed we should try. Redguard are clannish folk, and we'd be sure of a decent reward without having to play some complicated and dangerous game involving a ransom. The goodwill would help too; if not now, later. Those people have long memories.

"Anyway, the Dragonborn? I'm getting to her. We stayed in the camp that night, not without a few nervous glances at the black opening to the barrow, and in the morning the woman woke up, pretty weak, but she'd live. Her name was Salma, she said. Sensible girl; she knew the score and what had probably happened to her armor, and she didn't bother us about it. Knew too, or guessed, that we weren't bandits, exactly, and if we hadn't killed her by now, we weren't likely to do it later. Norri asked her about her family and was able to get enough information out of her to be able to send a message to them as soon as we were back at a town large enough to find a courier. She told us of a purse hidden at the back of the tent, too - you can imagine how stupid we felt at missing it the first time around - with enough in it to pay for the message to be delivered. Like I said, she knew the score. A delight to deal with, really. We ended up taking her to Morthal to stay in the home of one of our friends, after we remained at the barrow two or three more days for some of her strength to return. The courier went off, and a couple of people from her family came to pick her up about a month later. They made it worth our while, I can tell you that. Happy faces all around.

"Talking the second night after we had found her, Salma told us what she had been doing there, and that's where the Dragonborn came into the story, and our lives. Salma had gone there to search the tomb for treasure along with an Argonian named Bean-something - I always forget those damned names, they're as bad as orc ones - and he'd gotten cold feet when they arrived and didn't want to go in with just the two of them. Other reasons too, but she only found out about those later.

"Anyway, three days after they arrived, two women walked into their camp and said they were going into the barrow as well. They looked as if they meant business, Salma said. One of them was older and Dunmer; priestess of Azura, she learned later, grim-faced, a battlemage. That one didn't talk much. The other seemed to be in charge. She was a Breton, a thin slip of a girl, very young-looking, black hair and piercing blue eyes, ghost-pale, scarred, and tense as a bowstring. Never saw anyone like her before, and could never forget her even if she wanted to, Salma said. She was the Dragonborn, of course. All four of them had gone into the barrow together and cleared it. Then the Argonian had made the mistake of nominating the Dragonborn for a blood sacrifice he seemed to think was necessary, and had promptly found himself whacked. The two others had parted company with her soon after, but the Dragonborn and her companion had taken most of what the tomb had contained and left by a different exit, Salma told us.

"I think we all had the same thought at the same time. My Nord friend Hagar Oak-wall began to muse out loud, "So the tomb guardians are all dead or destroyed..." He didn't need to say anything more. _Something_ was probably left in there, unprotected now. Something we could have with no more work or risk than stretching out our hands.

"We came straight back there after getting Salma settled down in Morthal, and went into the barrow, cautious and slow at first, probing. But Hagar had guessed right: the tomb was empty of anything that could cause us trouble, and we found quite a heap of saleable objects in odd corners and dark places: gold and gems to be picked up, moonstone and silver ore to be mined, ancient Nord weaponry that I knew would be worth more to collectors in Cyrodill than arms dealers in Skyrim, intricate metal fittings that could be carefully pried off and reused, even a scroll or two that had rolled off a shelf or under a table. If you leave a place like that in a rush, there's no knowing what you might forget, or never even notice.

"Salma had also mentioned an ancient inscription in the depths of the cave that had done something strange when the Dragonborn approached it. I'd heard tell of such inscriptions before, and even seen one hard by the statue of Merida west of Solitude, where it's right in the open. Anyway, I had made sure to bring plenty of charcoal and paper, and took a rubbing. Glad I did afterward, because that rubbing fetched a small fortune later from one of _your_ people, the Synod's librarian in the Imperial City. And all of this gold we had gotten for free, without risking our skins, by just being in the right place at the right time.

"It was too rich a gig not to try again. A figure from legend doing all of the dirty work for us – what's not to like? We got the word out to our network of eyes and ears, and began to track her. Not too hard; even in those days, with all the dangers, there weren't a lot of young women running around diving into one tomb or cave after another, casting high-level spells at anyone or anything that got in their way. She was a bit unpredictable, but I was sure that sooner or later we'd have a routine worked out to get us the information we needed while it was still useful. And there were the endless leavings of the civil war to keep us busy and fed in the meantime.

"The timing was the tricky part. We had to get to the site within a week or so of the Dragonborn's visit, or hostiles might already have returned. Bandits, of course, were always pretty quick to find a vacant hideout, at least in those days, but that was something we knew and could prepare for. We were better armed than most bandits, and certainly better organized. The real problem was that the draugr came back as well, gods know how. We guessed that they must rise again by themselves after a time, certainly within a month or so. The thought crossed my mind more than once that if we burned the remains of the dead draugr, it would at least slow down their reappearance, but we never had the opportunity to do our own tests.

"We first ran into that problem at Bleak Falls Barrow, the second one we entered. I think that must have been the first barrow the Dragonborn cleared; at any rate, it was pretty early. We went there after receiving word from our contact in Riverwood, one of the most detailed leads we got, but an old one. It was no surprise that the bandits had reappeared, months at least since the Dragonborn had been there, but we pulled out in a big hurry when we ran into draugr. Some draugr you can fight without much danger, but we weren't about to take any chances that only the low-level ones were coming back. Going toe to toe with a Death Overlord is one of those things that's pretty certain to spoil your day.

"Of course, there was a plus side to it as well: we could charge more for rubbings of inscriptions if others couldn't get at the originals. The threat from the draugr was good for business; it kept the prices up and discouraged competition. But not every site contained an inscription, and it wasn't much good if we couldn't get to the inscription in the first place.

"There were other problems. Just about every site deep in Forsworn territory was too dangerous for us, at least back then. No matter how clean a sweep the Dragonborn made, there would always be enough of those savages left to first cut the roads, and later, our throats. Then, our network was full of holes in the far north. There was only a handful of people living up there, not enough to keep an eye on what was going on. And last but not least, especially with the smaller of the caves and barrows, the Dragonborn and her companion, when she took one along, sometimes really did empty the place out, leaving little for us to find. That's what happened at Yngol Barrow: I know we got in before anyone else, just after she left, but the only thing we were able to collect was a big old sword that had presumably belonged to the Death Overlord whose undead remains were scattered over the floor of the final chamber. Afterward, we found a brief note of apology that she'd left with the innkeeper in Winterhold; said there had never been much there in the first place.

"Oh yes, sometimes we'd get short messages like that, second and third hand, though usually by word of mouth rather than written. She knew very well who we were and that we were tracking her, and at first I don't think she liked it very much. But after a while, she could see we were only in it to make a living and weren't tattling to her enemies, and it settled into something like a routine, parallel lives. Having us as a sort of cleanup crew seemed to amuse her. On occasion she passed word of the route she'd taken through a big tomb, so that we wouldn't go a different way and get a nasty surprise. Once she advised staying away completely; too dangerous, she warned, and she was right, as we saw later when other scavengers entered that particular site and never came out again. But that was the exception, not the rule; usually there was nothing left that was either willing or able to make trouble after her visit. She picked just about every lock, and broke or jammed most of the traps. Meticulous, she was.

"So you can see, most of the time, this jackal-work paid, and for a while, we thought it would go on forever. Or at least until we ran out of old tombs and the like, and as you know yourself, there are a _lot_ of old tombs in Skyrim, thousands of years' worth of them. It dawned on us after a while that her main interest wasn't loot, but finding Word Walls to learn words for new Shouts, but since no one appeared to know very clearly where all the Word Walls were, or even how many of them there were, questing for them meant ransacking every dungeon and ruin she could discover."

At that point in his story, the old man fell silent for a time and began to fiddle with the empty bottles on the table in a significant manner. I took the hint, and went silently to buy two more from the innkeeper, wondering what the return on the Synod's investment would be. Items like some long-gone Redguard adventurer's thumbnail sketch of the Dragonborn in her prime were interesting, to be sure, but they told us nothing that we didn't know already.

The old man remained silent: he appeared to be as deep into thought as he was into the mead. I decided it was up to me to get the ball rolling again.

"What we were looking for in particular was information about any time that she behaved in an unusual manner," I began, carefully. "We know what everybody else knows, but we need to know more than that. Did she ever say anything to you or your associates about her powers and her quests? What she thought she was doing and how things might work out in the end? She was a very private person. Did she ever let the mask slip a bit around you, do something odd, make any remarks or comments that you didn't understand?"

He seemed to be thinking about the question a long time, silently. Though perhaps that was as much due to imbibing four bottles of strong mead in the course of the evening. Finally, he answered.

"We weren't exactly drinking buddies, you understand. When I said that she communicated with us, it was occasional, not a regular thing. And it was never more than a few words, passed on through someone else. She didn't often write things down, and we never met on purpose. Didn't have to. We had an understanding. Never made it formal, much less drew up a contract. On most of our jobs we never saw her at all, only what she'd done to the tomb and its occupants before we arrived. But once in a while..."

His voice trailed off, and he paused again to think before he continued, "Really, only once, early on. The elves didn't hear about that either, at least from me. I'd guess from their questions that they hadn't heard anything from others either. No surprise there. No one knows about it but those who were there. Most of them are dead now, and the rest aren't talking. We sort of agreed not to. Oh, and I wrote a brief account down for her daughter. She asked me to do that when I was at the Dragonborn's funeral in Whiterun, years ago. I suppose that was one of the reasons I was invited to the funeral. But her partner's dead now as well, and their daughter's more or less a recluse, I've heard it said."

"Unfortunately, that's correct. Their adopted daughter Shah'issol lives up on the Throat of the World, in High Hrothgar with the Greybeards. And she's not receiving visitors. Under any circumstances whatsoever."

_And the Greybeards despise the Synod and are sure we're up to no good gathering all this information_, I was tempted to add. _They call us heretics and backsliding bootlickers, and hint at drastic measures if I ever come back. _But you should never talk about your weaknesses, even to seemingly insignificant old men like the one here tonight. If word got out that the Greybeards disapproved of the Synod, it would make our work in Skyrim ten times harder. People would have more of an excuse to be uncooperative, not that many of them needed it.

He got up suddenly, as if he had come to some decision in his mind.

"I should have been home and in bed long ago," he said. "If I stay any longer, they'll send my niece here to fetch me. She has the loudest voice in the family, that's why they have her do it. Must figure I'm getting deaf in my old age."

"Will you be here tomorrow?" I asked, a bit annoyed at having put out a fair bit of coin for a few fragments of information already available to every well-read person in Tamriel. "You said there had been an...incident, didn't you?"

Already several unsteady steps toward the door, he shook his head and glanced back at me, bleary-eyed.

"Ragnvald. It happened there. Perhaps _incident_ is the wrong word. But all that will have to wait until tomorrow now. Pleasant dreams, sir mage."

I was a scribe, not a mage, but it scarcely seemed necessary to argue the point at that moment. He might not know the difference anyway. So I walked him to the door, and as effusively as I could manage, praised his contribution to my knowledge. At least I had one piece of new data now, a place name, and could read up on it in my Skyrim guides and histories, always supposing it was important enough to rate an entry. Maybe the old fellow was just trying to tease a few more bottles out of me. But then why provide the specifics? Just to give some heft to his words? I headed back to my room and my books to see what answers I could find.

There turned out to be not much on Ragnvald in any of my small collection of tomes on Skyrim, some brought from Cyrodill, some purchased after I arrived. Ragnvald, in the Reach, rated a brief mention in most accounts as the site of the tomb of the dragon priest Otar the Mad, one of the many ancient liches that had been rooted out and destroyed by the Dragonborn. In spite of the removal of its most powerful resident, Ragnvald was still marked as too dangerous to enter. Some mages from the College of Winterhold had recently sealed the entrances with warding spells, and nothing certain was known of what might still be inside. It was strictly off limits. I shrugged and put the books away. Tomorrow would tell.

He was late the next evening, and I had begun to wonder if he was coming at all when he finally arrived.

"Family thought I was a bit too tipsy when I arrived home last night. Must have been the cold air outside the inn that did it. I had to argue for a while before they'd let me go tonight, and promise not to drink more than two bottles." He shook his head and sat down on the opposite side of the table from me, the seat he had occupied the previous night. "It's more or less a two-bottle story, anyway. And I don't know that it will tell you much. But it's not quite what you'd expect after hearing all the songs and odes about her and how tough and resolute and decisive she was."

"Ragnvald?" I inquired, pleased that he planned to get things off to a quick start.

"Well, yes, Ragnvald..." He looked into the depths of his tankard for a long moment, and began.

"Most folk think of heroes, even women heroes, as big, brawny people. Larger than life in deeds makes them assume larger than life in everything else. That's the way the Dragonborn comes across in the tales and songs, knocking down a dragon with a single blow and then retiring to an inn and knocking off a gallon of ale in three gulps. Well, perhaps she did sometimes, the dragon, not the ale. I never saw her kill a dragon, though I've spoken with those that have. But big and brawny? No.

"Nearly always when I saw her, it was at a distance, and what I remember best is how tiny she always seemed. A figure lost in a jumble of enormous statues and great gray piles of rock. You have to remember, she was a pureblood Breton from High Rock, and those folk are the most lightly built of all the Ten Races, slender like elves but without the height an elf usually has. She was tall for a Breton, true, but there was no bulk to her at all. How she ever managed the weight and heft of the larger weapons was a mystery to me.

"There were usually a couple of draugr patrolling outside Ragnvald in those days, though I think they've been killed off for good now. They were wandering up and down the courtyard in front of the door, and we were watching from the hills by the side of the great stair that leads to the main entrance, waiting for her to arrive. We'd made a mistake, got there far too early, you see.

"The Dragonborn arrived alone after an hour or so, running – she nearly always ran, up slopes, in the snow, through brush, over ice, it didn't matter to her – and instead of putting arrows into the draugr, which was the obvious thing to do, or blasting them with magic from a distance, she took a greatsword to them, one after the other. Now, we saw a lot of greatswords in the loot, since they usually weren't valuable enough for her to care about, unless they were enchanted in some unusual way. You've handled one? No? Well, they're infernally heavy bars of metal. Even in my prime years, I didn't have to swing one for long before I felt the strain. They're something for a well-muscled Nord to use, or an orc, though orcs as a rule find them too clumsy. But she was waving the thing around as if it were a magician's wand, running like the wind all the while. The poor draugr didn't have a ghost of a chance; I think she could have chopped through twenty of them as easily as two. Thinking back on it, I'm pretty sure she knew we were there, and was showing off. That didn't make it any easier to do, though. I would have been staggering by the second stroke. She moved like a dancer the whole way through, damn her.

"But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'd best step back a bit and take it from the start. I suppose you read up a bit on Ragnvald last night. It's one of those old Nord edifices, north of Markarth in the mountains, thousands of years old, with big stone arches at the front and an iron door that still worked perfectly after all that time. A Word Wall too, worth another bag of septims from the Synod librarian. Draugr all the way through, with two high-level liches guarding the keys to the sarcophagus of the tomb's chief resident, a dragon priest named Otar the Mad. Who exactly he had been no one seems to know now, but he was one of those who had been granted his own special mask – I was told later that only a few of them had that distinction. It was a sign of belonging to the highest ranks, even though by modern standards some of the enchantments are pretty pathetic. I suppose they looked more impressive then, back at the time of the Dragon Wars.

"So we guessed she'd be going there sooner or later, and we had one or two people on watch. By this time, too, she knew more or less what we were doing and who our informants were, and didn't try too hard to keep her destinations a secret. But we got our instructions mixed up and arrived too early, even before she did. I suppose we could have met her at the door, but that was something we didn't do. Ran counter to our understanding. Instead, as I just said, we stayed near the entry staircase waiting for her to arrive.

"After she went in, we waited for hours, wondering what would happen and whether we would escape if it turned out to be a very mad Otar the Mad who finally came out that door instead of the Dragonborn – but it wasn't. Of course she won the fight. She always won. Sooner or later she'd emerge with her loot – you'll probably have guessed that she could carry a weight of treasure that would buckle the legs of a carthorse – after which it would be safe for us to enter and pick up whatever pieces were left.

"Just as the light began to fail, we saw her come out the front door. It had been misty and drizzling earlier, but the skies had cleared and it was a beautiful day by Skyrim standards – meaning that it probably wouldn't rain or snow for the next fifteen minutes. She had a huge load, and the first thing that we noticed was that she wasn't running any more. Instead, she was walking, very slowly, stumbling. But it didn't seem to be from the weight of her pack. Instead, she appeared to be in a daze, blind to her surroundings, raising her hands to rub her eyes, stopping for a moment, then shaking her head and moving on for another few steps.

"One of the boys, I don't remember clearly who now but I think it was Snorri – I mentioned him last night,didn't I? – he had the best eyes in our group at any rate. He watched her for a while as the distance between us lessened, and then turned to speak to us. "She doesn't look too good," he said. "I think something must have happened."

"And I think you were a bit too obvious with your staring just now," I replied. He'd just stood on the top of a rock and gawked at her. They were good men, every one of them, but young and none too subtle. "She's stopped. Pointed right in our direction. We shouldn't be here at all." I paused for another look. "And now she's coming this way. Always sticking your heads into things and it's left to me to deal with the consequences."

"I sighed theatrically, stood up, and started down the slope toward her. If she _was_ coming toward us, and not just wandering blindly, it seemed better to make a show of politeness and meet her half-way. But when I got to within a couple of arms-lengths of her, she veered to the side, dropped her pack, and sat on it, staring away from me, down the slope. Her shoulders were slumped, her head drooped, and she seemed utterly exhausted. I went no further forward, but sat down on a small outcropping of stone to wait for her.

"We stayed there motionless for what seemed like a long time, as the shadows moved over the pavement and the darkness gathered in the nooks and crannies of the temple's porch, the only sound the wind over the trees and stone, and now and then the cry of a bird in the distance. Finally she lifted her head and spoke, not to me really, but out into space down the long staircase.

""What a waste. What a _fucking_ waste."

"The tone was weary, but more than that, completely, utterly disgusted. She practically spat the words out. Now, those Nord tombs and barrows can be pretty depressing places, but the worst of what went on in them – apart from some gutted bandits, if they'd been dumb enough to go where they weren't welcome – had happened thousands of years ago. We're not talking about Falmer warrens here. In these places, the blood's long dry in the torture chambers, the racks and whips cracked and twisted by age, and the prisoners chained to the walls have been bones so long that half of them have fallen to dust. It's grim, but it's not... how can I put it? _personal_. No one you knew. Or your great-grandfather knew, for that matter. It's ancient history, dozens of generations ago.

"She looked at me directly, for the first time.

"'The draugr are vassals, you know. Now and forever.'

"I nodded, and she continued, 'Once human, now enchanted undead, by their own choice. Their duty, what they swore to all those years ago, was to protect and preserve the master of the tomb, and in turn the magics that kept the master tied to this world would... overflow, I suppose you could say... leave enough crumbs and scraps to maintain his servants. Though the supply fails slowly over the centuries as the master's power fades, and then one by one they join the dust. I knew that. It was in a book. A scholar went to live with them once, a woman, and after a while they tolerated her presence. She wrote about them. I read the book, years ago.'

"Glancing back at the tomb, she paused for a moment, and then went on, in an emotionless voice,

"'But still... I hadn't ever remembered that they had been human once. That something might persist. A sense of duty, loyalty... maybe even love. I thought they were just... _things_.'

"'But what if they _were_ human?' I objected. 'Bandits are human, soldiers are human. We kill humans all the time. People with parents, children, families. You have to be a pretty big bastard for no one at all to love you. We can't defend ourselves and our own if we think too much about the families, friends, of the people we fight. It's enough for me, enough for most, not to kill the helpless and wounded. The others? We can't _afford_ to think of them. If we want to stay alive ourselves.'

"She didn't seem to hear what I said. At least, she didn't respond directly, just went on again with her own story after another brief silence.

"'I was having _such_ a lot of fun with my new sword. Not the one I had going in, I left that heavy piece of crap in some draugr's head. Another one, single-handed. The first Daedric blade I've ever owned. They're sharp. Cut through just about anything. Had to use something more destructive at the end for old Otar, when he came popping out, but with the rest...I was chopping them up like vegetables. Arms off, legs off, and it was so easy that I laughed.'

"She took a deep breath and continued.

"'But Otar, Otar the Mad was tough. Took a lot to bring him down. When he finally went to ashes, dropping right back into his own coffin, he'd succeeded in pissing me off. So I decided to take his armor as a souvenir. The metal left when he burned up. Like some sort of birdcage. It isn't worth anything, so I usually pay it no attention.'

"I nodded. We'd already picked up a couple of these 'birdcages,' and delivered into the hands of the right collector in Cyrodill, they could fetch a fancy price. However, that was a trade secret.

"'There were a few other things to do first. I went up the stairs and turned left down a final passage to the Word Wall to learn the Word it carries. It turned out to be one for Kyne's Peace, for taming animals... pretty near useless in real life, but at least it doesn't kill anything. An exception to the usual rule.

"'I had the best of the treasure, I had the Word, but something didn't seem right. Stood in front of the Wall trying to think for what seemed ages, but all I got was a headache. So I turned around and headed back to the stair leading down to Otar's tomb, and past that, the exit. But there were noises out there that hadn't been there before. A harsh, scraping, rattling of dry things being dragged and pulled along, and a wheezing like a bellows being worked, getting slowly louder.

"'Of course, my first thought was that it was more draugr come to pester me. Tombs generally don't have much fight in them after you get to the end, but this one seemed to be shaping up as an exception. And I was tired and didn't feel well, so the thought of having to fight again made me angry. _Really_ angry. I just wanted to get out of there. I readied my fireball spell and moved toward the head of the stairs to incinerate anything that got in my way. But it wasn't about me at all.

"'I felt what had happened before I saw it, as I returned from the Word Wall. It was like a wave, a cloud of sadness and despair and... failure. Failure immutable and eternal. And then I turned and looked down the stairs, and stopped.

"'There were draugr all around Otar's coffin at the foot of the stairs, the draugr that I had just 'killed.' Some last impulse had drawn them to him, still in the shape I had left them, pierced with arrows, burned up, lacking arms and legs. They had dragged and staggered and rolled themselves there, and a few more were still coming, rocking and scraping along the floor or sliding down the stone stairs. They paid no attention to me at all. They had come to say good-bye to their master, the dying undead mourning the dead, and I realized that the coughing and gasping was their futile attempts to wail and cry. The fading magics that had kept them undead-alive had left their bodies dry as dust. They had no tears at all, just that horrible wheezing groan that went on and on and on.

"'There was one I recognized from my trip in. It had been a woman – servant, slave, concubine, wife? - it had made an clumsy lunge at me with a weapon too large for it just inside the door of the tomb. I had hacked both its arms off above the elbow and left it unmoving on the floor. But now it had crawled here. It knelt at the head of the coffin, beating its head and what was left of its arms against the stone and trying to wail, but only able to choke out a hacking cough. Finally it gave up and collapsed into a ball on the floor, rocking back and forth, sobbing with horrible dry gasps. I looked at it... at _her_... and felt empty and tired. A taste of what they were feeling, failure on top of failure. She and all of them had pledged to serve without fault beyond death and they had not done so. All their efforts had been unable to stop one giggling girl eager to try out her new Daedric blade, the demon's heart in the black metal, who had danced in here that afternoon and undone thousands of years of their devotion in a few minutes. It was over forever and it had all been nothing but a waste. They had not kept their word and their master was dust, and soon they would be dust as well, after being spared a little while, just long enough for it to sink in how stupid and slow and useless they had always been.'

"She was crying herself now, and had to stop for a moment and catch her breath. I said, 'And then you walked around them and came back here?' and immediately felt like a monster of banality. But she was beyond caring about things like that.

"'No. No, I didn't. I took a magicka potion and prepared the fireball spell again, and then I... I burned them all up. I couldn't stand to hear them any longer. Maybe it was selfish, but I just couldn't endure it. Their despair was choking me, walling me up alive in the tomb. I threw fire down the stairs until there was nothing at the bottom but embers and smoke, and then I ran blindly through the smoke along the last passages and up the stairs, and came out here.'

"She looked at me and forced a mirthless smile. 'I left Otar's remains there. Forgot to pick them up. You're welcome to them if you want. There's no danger in there now. Just ashes.'

"I replied, 'I think we'll wait a day or two for the air to clear. But what about you? Are you going to make it with that load?'

"To my surprise, she replied, 'No, I'm not. I'm leaving it here. You can have it. The only thing I'm taking is Otar's mask.' She got up from her pack suddenly, leaving it behind her on the ground.

"'I'm sorry, I have to go now,' she said in a quiet, strained voice. 'I'm going home. It's over. You're good people and thank you but...I need to be with Shahvee. She loves me so much and she'll understand. She always understands. No matter how stupid it seems to everyone else. I just want to go home.'

"Before I could react, she jumped up and began to stumble down the stairs. But after a few more steps, her footing was sure and she was running again. She paused at the foot of the stairs to wave good-bye to us, and then she was gone, a small, fading shape disappearing into the night, eastward down the road to Whiterun.

"The contents of her pack sold for over fifteen thousand septims. We talked it over, and ended up sending the money to her by courier. It seemed wrong to keep it; besides, we'd already had more than that from what had been left in the tomb. We were better at selling the stuff than she was, a _lot_ better. She'd just dump it at the nearest store in the nearest town, and get shortchanged again and again. But she never noticed, or more likely, never cared.

"A few days after we sent her the money, we got a package in return: Otar's mask. A scrawled note with it said, 'From Ragnvald, with our love. Please keep this. It reminds us of too much. Thank you again.' The mask hangs on the wall of my house to this day, over the big fireplace, and sometimes I fancy that old Otar has found peace at last, surrounded by an ordinary family that just tries to enjoy life and neither knows nor cares about him or his history. It's a better end than he might have had otherwise, all things considered."

When the old man finished his story, it was very late again. I thanked him once more, and he departed, noticeably more steady on his feet than he had been the previous night, and a good deal heavier in the purse.

I returned to my room at the inn and finished up my notes for the Synod, the material I'd use in writing my final report. It hadn't been the usual brash tale of faultless bravery, at any rate. A Dragonborn who shed tears over the tragedy of those who hopelessly defied her – that wasn't something you could find in a ballad, or even a history book. But it seemed to fit with other episodes in her life – the "futile" negotiations with the vampire clans that had brought stability to the relationship between them and their inevitable mortal prey, or the Covenant of the Children of Akatosh, the "impossible" treaty that became the foundation for an enduring peace between the dragons and the Ten Races. I could see the "impractical" dreamer, the "monomaniac" who never admitted defeat, in the much younger woman who had been able to share the misery of a dying draugr. She had an unquestioning, automatic empathy, a talent for feeling-with, that others lacked. It didn't stop her from doing what was necessary – she had slain the draugr, and burned them when they rose again – but she never regarded anyone, even an enemy, as a _thing_. She could put herself in their place, and experience their joy and grief, and this gift had enabled her to create harmonies where others had seen only hopeless discord and unending strife.

That automatic, indiscriminate empathy had probably been the reason Akatosh and Kynareth had bestowed the dragon blood on such a seemingly unlikely champion, a slender girl who all but doubled her weight if she held a warhammer in each hand. Perhaps the gods are tired of mighty men of action who never see through any eyes or feel through any hearts but their own. Perhaps the world needs a loom and a weaver more than it needs another hero with a battleaxe – to be gathered together as it is now, in all its imperfection, not hacked into some ideal shape...

This won't be a popular lesson to find in the Dragonborn's career. Those who fund the Synod are great believers in ideal shapes. They have the axes and feel that all they lack is the right pattern to guide their cutting. They aren't likely to take well to any suggestion that they are searching for the wrong thing.

But final conclusions are the business of others. I went there to find out what had really happened; if others don't like what it implies, so much the worse for them.


End file.
